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Majority of mobile users under 44 now have a smartphone

Smartphones continue to capture more mobile users, especially those less than 44 years old, according to a new third-quarter study from Nielsen.

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Only 43 percent of all mobile users own a smartphone, noted Nielsen. That figure covers everyone the company surveyed from 13 to over 65 years old. But ownership has hit more than 50 percent among some specific age groups under 44.

A majority 62 percent of those 25-34 own a smartphone and almost 54 percent of those aged 18-24 and 35-44 do as well. Teenagers are seen as heavy mobile phone users, but only 38 percent of those 13-17 own a smartphone as opposed to a basic feature phone. Moving up in age, 39 percent of mobile users 45-54 years old have a smartphone.

Smartphone usage is also growing among those 55-64. Though only 30 percent of people in this age range own a smartphone, that number is 5 percent higher than Nielsen saw in the second quarter.

In the neverending Android vs Apple smartphone contest, Android is on top, according to Nielsen with 43 percent of the U.S. market, while the iPhone is in the pockets of 28 percent of smartphone users. RIM’s BlackBerry owns an 18 percent share, leaving Microsoft’s Windows Phone with 7 percent, and other assorted vendors scooping up the remaining 4 percent.

Overall, smartphones grabbed 43 percent of mobile users for the third quarter, while feature phones still held onto a majority of 57 percent.

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Microsoft: Android is standing ‘on the shoulder of companies like Microsoft’

Microsoft: ‘Licensing is not some nefarious thing that people should be worried about.’

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Google is standing ‘on the shoulder of companies like Microsoft who made all these billions of dollars in investments‘ with its Android mobile OS, claims Horacio Gutiérrez, deputy general counsel in charge of Microsoft’s intellectual property group.

Gutiérrez makes this claim in an interview with SFGate.

Speaking in relation to the huge amount of litigation currently going on between mobile device players, Gutiérrez said that ‘there is a period of unrest and a period of readjustment, until the claims on the ownership of different pieces of technology are well known’ and that licensing and cross-licensing is required to make these problems ‘disappear into the background.’

Gutiérrez also believes that ‘licensing is not some nefarious thing that people should be worried about’ but instead ‘the solution to the patent problem that people are reacting so negatively about.’

Gutiérrez goes on to defend the software patent system, claiming that ’many things that earlier were implemented in hardware …  are now implemented in software’ and that the ‘patent system has actually played a role in securing the leadership that the United States has in this field.’

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Why Google would want Yahoo: A few opportunities could make it worth the effort

Google is reportedly in early talks about a bid for Yahoo. Can these opportunities make the likelihood of regulatory scrutiny worth it?

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That “person familiar with the matter” is talking to the Wall Street Journal again – and this time, that person is whispering tales of early-stage discussions between Google and some potential partners to make a bid for Yahoo.

Now, before anyone starts hollering “antitrust” in a building filled with government regulators, remember that there’s still no formal proposal yet and it’s very possible that Google might not pursue a bid at all. Instead, it seems like we’re at the stage where the key players are just scribbling out their lists of pros and cons about a possible deal.

Imagine the advertising possibilities, what with those hundreds of millions of faithful Yahoos who check in several times a day. But consider the sort of scrutiny that the deal would experience. Are the growth possibilities or the potential dollars-and-cents for the long run worth the efforts of defending the deal to regulators?

Maybe. If I were scribbling some thinking points on a Google bid for Yahoo, here’s what some of those random thoughts might look like:

Search: Google walked away from a search advertising deal with Yahoo once before – almost three years ago – after the Department of Justice said it would file an antitrust lawsuit against it. They went big, pared down and still couldn’t shake the feds – and so they walked. A year later, Microsoft inked a 10-year search deal with Yahoo. Certainly, regulators will be interested in search and how a Yahoo-Google-Microsoft love triangle impacts it. In terms of Google taking out a search competitor in Yahoo, that feels like less of an issue. Yahoo hasn’t been a search powerhouse for years and Carol Bartz, before she was shown the door, had been pushing the “Don’t compare us to Google” message at every opportunity.

Content: The other half of the We’re-not-Google mantra was a “We’re a media company” message that Yahoo backed with partnerships and acquisitions. Going after the likes of AOL, Yahoo stepped up its game in original content – not just YouTube style snippets that Bartz was fond of – but also original news. Remember that news has always driven advertising and Yahoo has millions of eyeballs visiting the site daily. Bartz wanted to make sure that the content they see – both news and advertising – on login and logoff pages, as well as other strategic locations, kept them on the site as long as possible. That’s counter to the Google experience that most people have – where they find what they were looking for and then click away to another site.

Advertising: Speaking of advertising, it’s always been funny to me that most observers still refer to Google as a search engine when, in fact, Google is an advertising company. Sure, search drives advertising. But Google execs have been saying for years that Google makes money when people spend time on the Web because that’s where they’re exposed to the advertising. Yahoo’s advertising strategy has struggled to compete against a giant like Google, but there’s still some value there. In fact, regulators should probably spend more time looking at how a deal might change the advertising business – and industries that are tied to it – rather than focusing their energies on the search issue.

Brand Loyalty: You really can’t downplay the significance of the value of the Yahoo brand and the power that comes with hundreds of millions of daily visitors, many of whose loyalty goes beyond what other Web companies experience. (Between email, finance and news, I’ve already visited a dozen or more Yahoo pages today – all before lunch.)In part, that “stickiness” is due to the company’s long-standing presence on the Internet. It was one of the first to offer Web-based email – and, as such, signed up people before Google could. Still, it’s kept the offerings fresh and relevant in a changing landscape for communicating with others and sharing information.

Other opportunities: The first thing that popped into my head when I thought about Google getting its paws all over those content relationships that Yahoo has established was how it could impact the efforts around Google TV. Like Apple TV, Google TV is still a work-in-progress. I’ve long said that I’m a fan of the concept – making both broadcast content and Internet content searchable for a more customized TV watching experience – but Google had a tough time getting the content providers on board. With Yahoo’s content offerings, Google TV – and Google News, as well – could get a boost in inventory. Now, if only they could work on that technology.

Some might argue that the time is right for Google to make a bid for Yahoo. The competitive landscape has changed, the technology has evolved, the global economy is in a different state and the political climate in Washington has shifted since the last time the mutterings of a Google-Yahoo deal were heard. Others might argue that the many tentacles of both businesses could prompt a long review of the deal while regulators sift through it all.

I wouldn’t be quick to place any bets on a deal happening – but it’s good that Google is at least exploring the possibilities. Yahoo has been through a lot in recent years and while it’s future might not appear to be so rosy, there’s a lot of life left in the company. And if Google (or Microsoft) could get their hands on it – or key pieces of it – the landscape in the tech industry could have some interesting twists and turns on the road ahead.

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Cloud tools give Microsoft partners a jump-start

Microsoft is giving its partners tools that could help drive more business to its cloud-based services.

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At the company’s annual Worldwide Partner Conference, being held this week in Washington, the new Microsoft channel chief unveiled programs that give Microsoft business partners free access to its cloud software as well as training.

“We’re going to provide a wide array of tools to help partners both drive the deals and once they get the deals, then manage the customers from the support and deployment aspect,” said Jon Roskill, who assumed the role of corporate vice president of the worldwide partner group on July 1.

While earlier in the week, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer extolled the virtues of Microsoft’s cloud services to partners, Roskill detailed how Microsoft would help partners get their own services started.

One package, called the Microsoft Cloud Essentials Pack, will offer partners free use of Microsoft cloud software, as well as access to an expanded online directory of business opportunities in 46 countries.

With this program, the company is offering 250 free internal-use seat licenses for two online Microsoft services, Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) and Microsoft Dynamics Online, which is the company’s customer relationship management service. Free licenses would also be available for Microsoft’s InTune and Azure services as well, though Roskill did not specify how many free seats would be available for these services.

Microsoft will also offer a range of courses for how to work with BPOS, as well as free pre-sales phone support for partners who register with the company’s advanced cloud program, called Microsoft Cloud Accelerate.

“We believe this will allow partners to quickly and effectively position BPOS solutions and resolve any issues that come up while they are going through the trial and deployment phases,” he said.

In his talk, Roskill offered the audience a list of traits that the “most successful partners” of Microsoft would possess. For one, such companies would run the “latest and greatest” Microsoft software. “I’ve seen partners who are still running on Windows XP and on Linux, and those are great folks, but they won’t be Microsoft’s best partners,” he said.

Secondly, the partners would need to understand their places in the ecosystem. “You all figured out your niche in the world — construction, [telecommunication], multimedia. The most successful partners have a clear understanding of where they are operating,” he said.

In his new role, Roskill will report to Vahé Torossian, corporate vice president of the worldwide small and midmarket solutions and partners group. Allison Watson, the former channel chief, will assume Roskill’s former role as the U.S. head of business and marketing.

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Microsoft looks to business tools for health care

Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer, demonstrated some applications on Thursday that apply current technologies to problems facing the health care industry.

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He spoke at the Pacific Health Summit in Seattle.

Technology developments aimed at businesses can help the medical field more than many people in health care may think, he said. For example, health care organizations often say that they have so much data, including patients’ medical, billing and insurance information, that it will be a challenge for technology companies to build applications around the data, Mundie said.

But Mundie discovered that, in fact, the data collected by some businesses far surpasses that of health care groups. His researchers found that every five hours, consumers upload enough video to YouTube to match all data that the Beth Israel hospital system in Boston has collected in total over the past 27 years. Similarly, every day, consumers upload a volume of data in Facebook photos that equals all of the hospital’s data, he said.

Beth Israel was the largest single health care system in terms of data that Microsoft could find in the U.S. in order to make this comparison, he said.

“While yes, medical data is big and complicated, by today’s standard it’s actually not very big,” Mundie said.

The volume of medical data is set to grow, though, as an increasingly tech-savvy population begins to use devices that collect health information and transmit it to back-end databases. For example, bathroom scales and hearth monitors can automatically send data to databases.

By combining such user-generated data with information produced in the clinical care environment, “we’ll be enlightened,” Mundie said.

His researchers are working on ways to analyze that data and apply machine learning to improve care and reduce costs in health care. Microsoft did one experiment in which it used machine learning to look at 10 years of data from a hospital to try to predict whether a patient was likely to be readmitted to the hospital. It used all the data from the hospital, including clinical data and billing information.

“We set about to answer the question of, if you look at things that are expensive in medicine, is there a way to not ask doctors what the answers are, but can you ask the data instead and would you get a different answer,” he said.

Microsoft’s tool looked at data for people who had congestive heart failure and found many of the same correlations that doctors look for to determine if the person was likely to require readmittance. But the tool also found new scenarios. For example, it found that patients who were given drugs for gastric disorders and those with depressive issues had higher incidences of return visits.

The idea is to use machine learning to identify patients who are likely to have additional problems, and then doctors can decide to intervene in advance, he said.

“We think we’re just scratching the surface of what can be done using machine learning technology,” Mundie said.

Microsoft uses machine learning for a number of its own products, such as its Bing search engine.

He also showed off ways that health workers could use Microsoft’s Kinect sensor, currently used in conjunction with the Xbox 360 game console. Kinect lets users move their arms, bodies and voices rather than a game controller to interact with games.

Mundie showed an example where a health care worker could use voice commands to sift through patients to identify those who might be eligible to be entered into a new program. He was presented with photographs of the patients and could choose one in order to see visual representations of clinical data. For example, a chart showed one patient’s weight, and Mundie could drag an incident where the patient sprained her ankle onto the chart to see how that incident correlated with changes in weight.

He also showed a scenario where diabetes patients could be part of a virtual support group. The group appeared as avatars sitting in a room, and members used Kinect sensors to interact in the virtual group. The application uses avatars for individuals because some people would prefer not to use their true image, as they would in a video chat. But the avatars move and reflect facial expressions just like the real person does. That could allow a health care worker to review a recorded video of the session to look for clues that individuals may not be engaged by the sessions, Mundie said.

Mundie has spoken at the Pacific Health Summit many times in the past, and often the futuristic technologies he demonstrates become commercial, he said. For example, he once discussed ways that inkjet printers could inject medicines onto pills or other surfaces, and this year a major drug company is completing a trial doing just that. He also once showed off robots that could be used in health care, and there are now 400 of them being used commercially.

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Google+ iPhone App released

After an overwhelming response of users just during the field trial period, Google is now
onboard with iPhone for the release of its first Google+ iPhone app. This recently released
application is now available for iPhone (4.1 iOS or newer), featuring all the vital functions for
your ease with the commitment to thrive in the future as well.

 

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The best and most promising thing about this application is that it’s totally free, which makes
it a lot easier for everyone to get it directly from the iTunes. It is also reported that this iPhone
app for Google+ has now become the no. 1 free application in the Apple app store. You
can use many of the Google+ features on this app like access or manage your circles, get
streaming updates from your friends and other contacts, upload photos, check in from different
places, or use Huddles which is the instant group messaging service you can enjoy within a
circle. ‘Huddles’ is a great feature that is available in Google+ for mobile only.

The main interface of the Google+ iPhone app is very neat and simple, giving it a classy
Googlized touch. It has a black bar above and below the app with Settings and Notifications
icons on it. In the middle, there are only five icons namely Stream, Huddle, Photos, Profile,
and Circles arranged in a simple grid mode. In terms of appearance, this iPhone app looks
exactly like the Android app for Google+.

Goole+iphone app

The application is not available for iPads or iPhones with older versions yet, so we can only
hope to see these other versions sometime really soon. Since Google+ is one of the fastest
growing projects ever presented, the developers must definitely be working really hard to
spread it on all the devices as soon as possible. Makes sense, right?

For all those who’re still not aware about The Google+, let me tell you, it’s a newly released
social networking project by Google, which is still in the field trial period, and like the
previous project Orkut, is accessible through invitations only. It will be open to public once
it gets over its trial mode, explained the developers. The project already received such an
amazing response from all around the world that people now expect it to oust Facebook in
the future. According to Google’s CEO Larry Page, “There are more than 10 million users on
the social network already, and more than 1 billion items are shared every day”.

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Silver Surfers are past it? Never!

Well, much to my amusement I recently discovered that there’s a new name for Internet users in my age group: We are now called “Silver Surfers” (with apparently no nod to Marvel and its superhero of the same name).

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Yep, we of the SS … wait, that doesn’t sound good … er, we SSers (nope, that’s not much better) … um, we Online Baby Boomers (OBBs … yeccch), that is to say, those of us born between 1946 and 1964 who use the ‘Net, are a huge cohort.

And those of us Silver Surfers who have, in particular, been in the Information Technology world, have also been through the mill: We were around to grapple with mainframes and we were there to wrestle with minicomputers.

We know punched paper tape from punch cards. We know what green bar paper is. We’ve mounted mag tape and manhandled diskpacks the size of hat boxes (if any of that makes no sense to you, dear reader, you aren’t a Silver Surfer).

We Silver Surfers then tamed PCs when they put in an appearance and we built local area networks out of them with what today looks like baling wire, chewing gum and hope.

Even better, we made the Internet explosion happen and then we enjoyed the Internet Bubble and were dismayed when it burst. We have been around the block and we’ve been back again.

Solid Gold technology of the 1980s

And from all that experience we have wound up with complex, rich skill sets derived from decades of hacking (the good kind) every piece of gear put in front of us, as well as from building every kind of systems and subsystems you can think of, along with coding, debugging, tracing, analyzing, documenting and wrangling the barely wrangleable.

In short, we are IT heroes. Hell, we’re Business Heroes … or rather we should be.

But the reality is that despite our unarguable chops and our glorious histories, the Silver Surfers are often looked at as “past it” (or maybe that should be “past IT”).

The truth is that we are anything but.

Sure, you can bring in Young Turks with all sorts of qualifications; They can have an MCTS, MCITP, Oracle OCA/OCP, CCNA, RHCE, CISSP, CET, CWNA, LPI, SCJP, CIW, MOS, PM, or an ABCDEFGHIJK but, seriously, what do they know?

On the other hand, what many Sliver Surfers have that the Young Turks don’t have is “insight”; that almost magical ability to see the architecture of systems and processes and how they relate to business along with their opportunities and flaws.

Most of the young ‘uns take one look at an existing infrastructure and the first thing that occurs to them is to tear it all down and start again. The Sliver Surfers are different; they “grok” that there’s a working machine to be dealt with and that when you interfere with something in the enterprise world that is functional, no matter what problems it may have, you risk business “meltdown.”

Nope, the Young Turks most often want to rebuild from the ground up rather than face the realities of business which are, essentially, that money has been invested and instituting wholesale change is equivalent to tearing the business apart. If they were dealing with a car this would be like replacing the engine when what you’re trying to do is fill the tank.

One of the things I know from some of my Silver Surfer IT friends is that this economy hasn’t been kind to them. These are guys who have incredible technical abilities and if they haven’t architected it, they coded it, and if they didn’t do that, they most likely project managed it.

But over the years they have become almost too knowledgeable. They can’t work for some guy half or even two-thirds their age who doesn’t have a clue. They really do know the answers or, if they don’t, they know how to do the analysis to find out.

And when the Young Turks pick the latest and, in the opinion of the salesman they dealt with, greatest solution and ignore that the Silver Surfers who actually know BS when they see it and smell it, it’s a standoff: Age against energy, knowledge versus belief, warranted cynicism over reckless enthusiasm, and, ultimately, pearls before swine.

So, if you are a CxO who gets to deal with IT in any way, keep in mind that the Silver Surfers may be old and wrinkled, they may be unwilling to work 16 hours a day, they may (occasionally well, maybe often) be cranky and even rude when they think you’re talking crap but, you know what? If they think you are talking crap when it comes to IT then you probably are and they are probably right.

The Silver Surfers have been there and back, around the block and up at the pointy end. And if you listen to them they’ll save you money, waste far less time and make your life easier.

Google, Tech

Peter Jones: Virtual life will kill Google

Interview: We grill gadget-mad Peter Jones on how he sees the tech worWe had a brief chat with Den dragon, entrepreneur, gadget fan and all-round business god Peter Jones about the world of tech according to him. Here’s what we found out.

Which one gadget could you not live without?

“Clearly everybody accepts that you can’t live without the mobile phone, but it if isn’t that, it’s got to be the BT broadband dongle. I’m sorry to say that it’s very much business related for me, even when I’m holiday. I always take about three different dongles and an extra notebook and mobile phones when I go away just in case anything happens. I have to be connected. If you took my dongle away I’d probably send someone after you.”

You’re a prolific twitterer aren’t you?

“No I’ve actually never been on twitter. It’s interesting though because people keep pretending to be me. I had a situation where someone was trying to be me and it got quite freaky because they even knew my next appointments. We do use it though for our National Enterprising Academy and BT events though. We use it to let people know what’s coming up.”

What’s your favourite Dragon’s Den or American Inventor gadget?

 

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“It’s a gadget from Dragon’s Den called ‘trueCall’. It links into the you phone system and filters out useless phone calls.”

And your least favourite?

“Layline Beds. It’s basically a sheet with a stitched line down the middle to tell husband and wife that ‘this is my space and this is your space’. It is ridiculous. That, or the American Inventor guy who said that spinning bicycle hub cabs will be the next craze. Only in America!”

What’s the craziest idea you’ve ever seen?

“Back on Dragon’s Den; first or second series. Knee Roller Skates. When Dads go around the house on their knees playing ‘horsey’ with kids, their knees get worn out, so this guy invented skates to wiz down the corridor without taking a punishment on your knee. I think he’s currently under close personal scrutiny and protection with people in white coats.”

Is there anything you regret not going in on?

“I don’t actually. No regrets. Even when I see some successful products coming out I don’t have regrets because I’m still lucky enough to have the most successful record of investments out of all the Dragons. My investment with Levi Roots, for example, is the most successful investment ever made on a television programme. He’s now a multi-millionaire several times over. It’ll take the other Dragons a long time and a lot of investments to catch up with that one.”

Sir Alan Sugar famously once said that the iPod will ‘be dead in a year’. Have you ever made any similarly poor judgements?

“Not yet. Alan Sugar’s a lot older than me and had a lot more time to put his foot in his mouth. I’m sure my time will come.”

Who’s the most gadget-savvy of the Dragons?

“Me, without question. You have James who was in recruitment, Deborah who was in leisure industry, Duncan who is just brainless anyway, and Theo who’s probably the nearest to me because he’s in technology as well. I started my business after school with computers though. I was always looking at taking apart and fixing them. Whenever all the gadgets come into the Den, it’s always me who sees the opportunity. Whereas Duncan will just say “I don’t understand it,” like most things in life… he doesn’t.”

Would you say Duncan is the least tech-savvy then?

“He’s the least savvy. You can cut out the word ‘tech’.”

If you could have backed or been behind one gadget what would it have been?

“MS DOS, or the original computer operating systems. The most natural answer for something that I wish I’d invented though is probably… I wish I’d invented the mobile phone, owned all the rights to the tech, and then licensed it off to other manufacturers.”

What’s your favourite for the ‘Gadget of the Year’ in the T3 Gadget Awards?

“There’s only one: the Samsung LE40B650 TV. I’ve seen it – it is unbelievable. The quality of the screen and image is second to none. All the other products there are out, and they’re ok technology but this is real cutting edge tech at the top of its game.”

iPhone or Blackberry?

“I’ve got a Macbook and a dongle – that’s good enough for me. I’ve used a blackberry before, but it’s difficult when you’re looking at such a small screen. You try and do a spreadsheet on such a small device! It’s the notebook and the dongle for me.”

Google’s now undoubtedly huge. What do think it’ll take to topple it?

“For me, it’ll be blown out of the water when virtual voice activation takes over: When you can walk into a fully centralised home that’s linked up with a computerised system, and that learns intuitively when you ask it things. I see the virtual life form killing Google. The web will be a central location device but you won’t have to use a search engine like Google. If you had a virtual life-form that runs your life and learns what you want, that’d be amazing. I think that could be less than 20 years away. The underlying technology is already there, in a way.”

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Microsoft uses TruCast to build community for Windows 7

Building community for Windows 7 is a challenge. Howevever, Microsoft says a tool called TruCast helped them do just that.

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Stephen Rose, senior community manager at Microsoft, has a big job. He’s responsible for managing a worldwide community of more than 22 million IT professionals who use Microsoft products. An even bigger job: He’s also responsible for creating community around Windows 7.

Rose primarily works with the Springboard group, an offshoot of Microsoft Technet, a central location that holds Microsoft info for IT pros on client operating systems. The Springboard site, according to Rose, is one of the most used sites on Technet. To help create community and awareness for Windows 7, Rose and his team in part created the Springboard Series Technical Expert Panel (STEP), a “by the community, for the community” program to spur advocacy within IT professionals and community influencers withinthe Microsoft, MVP, and MCT communities. Microsoft wanted to inspire influencers to host or speak at user groups, conferences, etc., or to write about their user experiences with Windows 7.

The challenge? To do both of these Rose and the Microsoft team needed a way to best determine who those influencers are outside of big-name bloggers and journalists. They wanted to talk to the folks in the trenches who are experienced with and fans of Windows 7 to help convert those folks on the fence.

Rose created the panel using a mix of social media tools, such as Twitter and Facebook. That was great for outreach, but what about finding unknown influencers? Rose started using a tool called TruCast from Visible Technologies, a social media monitoring, measurment and engagement solution. TruCast helps companies listen to and learn what targeted influencers are saying in blogs, social networks, bulletin boards, online user groups, and so on, and actually works as a response platform once those targets are acquired. The TruCast dashboard allows for users to know the degree of satisfaction level of their users.

“It would be impossible for us to go out and scrape that kind of information without spending hours and hours of time. This is something we can do in a matter of minutes,” he said. “What’s great is it can help us point to where we are missing the mark, where we aren’t engaging, and where are users are that need support from Microsoft. How was I to know we had a 1,200-person user community in the middle of Arkansas? Now we can put a subject matter expert in front of them and get a high amount of impact.”

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TR: The 10 Best IT Certifications 2010

Here’s a list of the 10 accreditations with the greatest potential for technology support professionals, administrators, and managers seeking employment within consulting firms or small and midsize organizations.

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This post originally appeared on TechRepublic. It is also available as a PDF download.

By Erik Eckel

Just as with many popular arguments — Red Sox v. Yankees, Chelsea v. Manchester United, Ford v. Chevy — IT certifications are popular fodder for debate. Except that certifications, in an IT professional’s microcosm of a world, have a bigger impact on the future. Just which certifications hold the most value today? Here’s my list of the 10 accreditations with the greatest potential for technology support professionals, administrators, and managers seeking employment within consulting firms or small and midsize organizations.

1: MCITP

This best certification list could be built using 10 Microsoft certifications, many of which would be MCITP accreditations. The world runs on Microsoft. Those professionals earning Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP) certification give employers and clients confidence that they’ve developed the knowledge and skills necessary to plan, deploy, support, maintain, and optimize Windows technologies. Specifically, the Enterprise Desktop Administrator 7 and Server Administrator tracks hold great appeal, as will Enterprise Messaging Administrator 2010, as older Exchange servers are retired in favor of the newer platform.

2: MCTS

With operating systems (Windows 2000, 2003, 2008, etc.) cycling through every several years, many IT professionals simply aren’t going to invest the effort to earn MCITP or MCSE accreditation on every version. That’s understandable. But mastering a single exam, especially when available examinations help IT pros demonstrate expertise with such popular platforms as Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, and Microsoft SQL Server 2008, is more than reasonable. That’s why the Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) accreditation earns a spot on the list; it provides the opportunity for IT pros to demonstrate expertise on a specific technology that an organization may require right here, right now.

3: Network+

There’s simply no denying that IT professionals must know and understand the network principles and concepts that power everything within an organization’s IT infrastructure, whether running Windows, Linux, Apple, or other technologies. Instead of dismissing CompTIA’s Network+ as a baseline accreditation, every IT professional should add it to their resume.

4: A+

Just as with CompTIA’s Network+ certification, the A+ accreditation is another cert that all IT professionals should have on their resume. Proving baseline knowledge and expertise with the hardware components that power today’s computers should be required of all technicians. I’m amazed at the number of smart, intelligent, and seasoned IT pros who aren’t sure how to crack the case of a Sony Vaio or diagnose failed capacitors with a simple glance. The more industry staff can learn about the fundamental hardware components, the better.

5: CSSA

SonicWALLs power countless SMB VPNs. The company’s network devices also provide firewall and routing services, while extending gateway and perimeter security protections to organizations of all sizes. By gaining Certified SonicWALL Security Administrator (CSSA) certification, engineers can demonstrate their mastery of network security essentials, secure remote access, or secure wireless administration. There’s an immediate need for engineers with the knowledge and expertise required to configure and troubleshoot SonicWALL devices providing security services.

6: CCNA

Although SonicWALL has eaten some of Cisco’s lunch, the demand for Cisco skills remains strong. Adding Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) expertise to your resume does no harm and helps convince larger organizations, in particular, that you have the knowledge and skills necessary to deploy and troubleshoot Cisco routing and switching hardware.

7: ACTC

Here’s where the debate really begins. Increasingly, my office is being asked to deploy and administer Mac OS X networks. In the real world, divorced from IT-industry rhetoric, we’re being asked to replace older Windows networks with Mac OS X client-server environments. We’re particularly seeing Apple traction within nonprofit environments. We’ve found the best bet is to get up to speed on the technologies clients are requesting, so it stands to reason that earning Apple Certified Technical Coordinator (ACTC) 10.6 accreditation won’t hurt. In fact, developing mastery over Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server will help provide confidence needed to actually begin pursuing Apple projects, instead of reactively responding to client requests to deploy and maintain Apple infrastructure.

8: ACSP

Apple Certified Support Professional (ACSP) 10.6 accreditation helps IT professionals demonstrate expertise supporting Mac OS X client workstations. If you work for a single organization, and that firm doesn’t use Macs, you won’t need this certification. But larger organizations adding Macs due to demand within different departments or consultants working with a wide client base will do well to ensure they have Snow Leopard client skills. The ACSP is the perfect way to prove mastery.

9: CISSP

Unchanged from the last 10 best certifications list, ISC2’s security accreditation for industry professionals with at least five years of full-time experience is internationally recognized for its value and validity. The Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) title demonstrates expertise with operations and network security, subjects that will only increase in importance as legal compliance, privacy, and risk mitigation continue commanding larger organizations’ attention.

10: PMP

I fear organizations begin cutting project managers first when times get tough. Management roles and responsibilities often get passed to technical staff when layoffs occur. Even in challenging economic times, though, IT departments require staff familiar with planning, scheduling, budgeting, and project management. That’s why the Project Management Institute’s (PMI) Project Management Professional (PMP) accreditation makes the list. The cert measures candidates’ expertise in managing and planning projects, budgeting expenses, and keeping initiatives on track. While there’s an argument to place CompTIA’s Project+ certification in this slot, PMI is a respected organization that exists solely to further professional project management and, as such, deserves the nod.

Honorable mentions: MCSE, ITIL, RHCP, Linux+, VCP, ACE, QuickBooks, Security+

In the previous version of this article, readers asked where NetWare certification stands. It’s not on the list. That’s not a mistake. It’s gone the way of BNC connectors, in my opinion. Microsoft owns the market. MCSEs have more value.

ITIL has its place, particularly in larger environments. RHCP (or Linux+) and VCP have roles within enterprises dependent upon Red Hat/Linux and VMware virtualization technologies certainly, but those organizations remain hit or miss.

Acronis’ ACE deserves a look. With some 3 million systems being backed up now by Acronis image software, it would behoove technology professionals to learn how to properly use the software. I think it’s fair to say there’s still some confusion as to the software’s tremendous potential.

SMBs are also demonstrating a surge of interest in QuickBooks technologies. From QuickBooks Point-of-Sale to QuickBooks Enterprise platforms, there’s strong, growing demand for QuickBooks expertise in the field. The company’s growth is impressive. There’s no other way to describe it. In a crappy economy, Intuit’s growing.

Security+, really, is a no brainer, but I’ll get lit up if I include nothing but CompTIA certifications in the top 10 list. However, my advice for anyone entering the industry or even veterans seeking their first accreditations would be to load up on CompTIA certs. How can you go wrong with the manufacturer-independent certifications that demonstrate mastery of fundamentals across a range of topics, including project management, hardware, networking, security, and voice networks? You could do much worse.

A word on the methodology

There’s no double-blind statistically valid data analysis run through a Bayesian probability calculus formula here. I’ve worked in IT long enough, however, and with enough different SMBs, to know what skills we need when the firm I co-own hires engineers and sends technicians onsite to deploy new systems or troubleshoot issues.

Sure, I could have thrown in ITIL to satisfy enterprise professionals, included RHCP to sate the rabid open source crowd, and added VCP to look hip modernizing the list with a virtualization element. But I’m just not seeing the demand for those skills in companies with up to several hundred employees. My firm’s been asked to deploy exactly one Linux server in almost seven years. And we’ve virtualized maybe a dozen systems. Therefore, I feel it would be a disservice to readers to include such accreditations when I see, on a daily basis, vastly greater demand for these other skill sets.

Erik Eckel is president of two privately held technology consulting companies. He previously served as executive editor at TechRepublic. Read his full bio and profile.